- NFT startup Dust Labs secured $7 million in seed round funding to develop the $DUST token ecosystem.
- Investors include Chapter One, Magic Eden, FTX Ventures, and more.
- Y00ts NFT mint finally went live on September 5th after fixing a “blocker bug” issue.
- The much-awaited collection has topped the charts with over 200k SOL in trading volume on OpenSea in the past 24 hours.
What you need to know about Dust Labs’ latest fundraise
Dust Labs, the Web3 startup tied to y00ts and DeGods NFTs, has raised $7 million in seed round funding. The announcement came shortly after the buzzy y00ts NFT mint went live on Monday night.
Several prominent investors participated in the round. These include Chapter One, Foundation Capital, Magic Eden, Metaplex, Jump, FTX Ventures, and Solana Ventures. In a report by CoinDesk, the funding was a 50/50 split between the company’s equity and its $DUST token, the native token of the DeGods NFT project.
Though not many details yet, the firm revealed in a tweet that it would be using these fresh funds to build out the $DUST ecosystem. As to how they can accomplish this, Dust Labs’ CEO Kevin and DeGods’ creator Frank will disclose more in an upcoming AMA (ask me anything) on September 8th.
“Hearing the DUST vision from Frank and Kevin was truly an insane moment and the conversations will be remembered forever,” said Jack Lipstone, Venture Partner of Chapter One in a tweet. “Super excited to work closely with Dust Labs & [its] community!”
Sharing the same excitement, founder and managing partner of Chapter One Jeff Morris Jr. said: “We’ve never seen a community quite like DeGods NFT and y00ts NFT – both built by Dust Labs. The creativity of Frank is unlike anything in crypto [space] and Kevin is a world-class engineer who will make this crazy vision happen.”
We would like to announce that we have raised a strategic round of $7M to build out the $DUST ecosystem.
AMA with @frankdegods & our CEO @kevindegods on Thursday, September 8th. pic.twitter.com/VxzdZeu3P0
— Dust Labs (@dust_labs) September 6, 2022
Dust Labs’ relation to y00ts and DeGods NFT
To those who don’t know, Dust Labs is an NFT startup established by the founders of DeGods NFT. But unlike how Yuga Labs is to BAYC, it is not a parent company to the y00ts or DeGods NFT projects.
Instead, the firm is a separate Web3 firm that aims to provide software and tooling for NFT projects running on Solana and Ethereum. Its first product is a scholarship whitelisting tool “y00tlist”, available on the project’s minting webpage.
About y00ts – the most hyped NFT project on Solana
Being one of the hottest NFT projects on Solana, y00ts is a collection of 15,000 yeti-like PFP avatars created by the DeGods founding team. The project, which has a transparent whitelisting system, saw applications from several big names like NFT influencers and soccer legend Wayne Rooney.
Accepted applicants and DeadGod holders can mint “t00bs”, which can be burned to get “y00ts”. Each of them costs 375 $DUST to mint, with the price going up to 500 $DUST on September 9th. After that, it will increase by 0.8325 $DUST daily until the token emission ends.
As of writing, y00ts has exceeded 200k SOL in trading volume (about $6.1 million) on OpenSea! The collection is now topping off the charts with a floor price of 155 SOL (around $4,800).
$DUST, on the other hand, is not doing so well. The token price at one time plunged more than 30% in a classic “sell the news” fashion after the y00ts NFT mint began on Monday.
Even so, $DUST is expected to introduce more use cases in the future. Magic Eden, one of the top Solana NFT marketplaces, is planning to support the native token on its platform soon. For now, holders can only use the token to mint new collectibles under the DeDAO treasury.
It remains to be seen how Dust Labs will develop its utility token in the future. Those who want to learn more will have to stay tuned for the AMA on Thursday.